Each of the major social networks has evolved to place emphasis on something that they have excelled beyond all others. Twitter is the king of what's current. Facebook is all about planning events and staying in touch with family and friends. And despite a constant narrative about its impending doom, Google+ has become one of the best places for actual content creators to share their work. Photographers, writers, chefs, and other adventurous, interesting, and creative people have come together to share their passions.

Yesterday, Google announced a new program called Google+ Create that will fuel this trend by featuring great collections and the people that put them together.

Chromecast has been slowly but steadily adding support from major media apps since it launched: Hulu Plus, Pandora, and HBO GO have joined Netflix and Google's own Play Music, Play Movies, and YouTube. Apparently the Big G thinks this is enough to warrant a dedicated sub-section of the Play Store, as spotted by Google Operating System. Depending on your device and its resolution, it might show up on the main Apps page or necessitate a quick swipe to the left to open the Categories menu.

There's not much to it: the feature is just a list of the seven apps mentioned above, plus an embedded "how to cast" video at the top.

A Look Back To 2011

Way back in January 2011, we were all gobsmacked at the recent announcement of 300,000 Android activations per day. That looks cute now, doesn't it? A year later and it's more than doubled, now we're up to 700,000 per day. That's just incredible. Android could hit a million activations per day by the end of the year.

A few weeks ago, we launched what ended up being my favorite creative Android Police contest to date - the wallpaper design contest. With over 250 submissions, it took me a little while to sort through everything and pick out the two winners, the top 25 runners-up, and even one hilarious entry that we absolutely had to include.

As promised, the first place entry will receive a 16GB Sony Tablet S, and the second one will get the Philips Fidelio AS851 that we reviewed earlier.

Update: This post has been updated with links to a deeper look at each feature. Enjoy!

Holy crap. The Samsung/Google event ended just a little while ago, and I have to say, I'm pretty overwhelmed by the amount of awesome that I just experienced. The Galaxy Nexus is official, as is its counterpart OS: Ice Cream Sandwich. There is no doubt that ICS is the most polished version of Android to date. It's elegant, clean, and just downright gorgeous. Let's take a look at all the new features together, shall we?

Roboto

One thing that Google is definitely proud of in ICS is the new typeface, known as Roboto.

As you guys should already know, from time to time we mix things up a bit and run creative giveaways that give the most talented of our readers a real chance to win something big. Remember the 404 page design (also see this), which happens to be my favorite contest so far?

The banner design contest was created to run in a similar vein, and now that we've finally had enough time to sort through all the submission (there were over 150 links to look through), we decided to award the prize, a brand new Lenovo IdeaPad K1 Tegra 2 tablet, generously provided by NVIDIA, to...

In fact, once I install a Windows OS nowadays, Total Commander is the first program that follows. Those who try 2-pane file managers can't (or rather shouldn't want to) go back to the conventional Explorer-style layouts - the level of productivity they bring is unparalleled.

Total Commander for Android

But let's come back to Android - after we posted the Dual File Manager XT, 2 people (Wr3ck and Martin) brought to my attention the fact that Christian Ghisler, the developer behind my favorite Total Commander, has been actually working on an Android port for quite a while now.

After spending almost a year with my EVO 4G in what was essentially rooted stock condition (Fresh ROM, based on stock Sense, minus bloatware), I finally got frustrated to the point that I was ready to make the jump to CyanogenMod and see just how much better the fully unlocked stock Android experience with CM improvements is.

The Sense ROM offered by Fresh, even in its supposedly optimized form, was starting to get quite slow and would sometimes start choking for no reasons whatsoever. Whenever I was installing apps, I could forget about getting any useful response out of the phone - I had to wait till it was done in order to avoid frustration.